Starscream had once been peerless: the fastest Seeker in Vos, the brightest mind in the Iacon Science Academy, Air Commander of the Decepticon Armada, and ultimately second in command of the Decepticon Empire. Starscream had carved this path through his own tenacity, claiming power and prestige that none had ever dared dream of before. His ascendance through the ranks had been meteoric, his progress eclipsed only by his ambition.

Where was Starscream now?

Exiled on an alien world. No rank. No energon. No transformation cog.

Anyone else might have been doomed in this scenario, but Starscream still had his wits. Those would be enough for Starscream to claw his way out of exile and exact revenge on all who had betrayed him—starting with that ungrateful fool, Megatron.

Wits would have to suffice, in any case, since Starscream had nothing else left.

The vast deserts and plunging canyons of the place that fleshlings called "Arizona" had held a certain alien beauty when Starscream flew over it in the past. Back then, when searching this continent for the wreckage of the Harbinger transport vessel, Starscream had found plenty of time to observe the natural terrain while automatic scanner subroutines kept a lookout for Cybertronian technology. From the aerial viewpoint, one could appreciate the interplay of light and shadow across rock formations, marking paths where natural forces of water and wind had molded the landscape into intricate patterns.

Now, walking like a crippled ground-frame under the scorching heat of the midday sun, Starscream had nothing but hatred for this wretched planet. Up close, those pretty rock formations that flight speeds had once reduced to miniscule blips became a labyrinth of treacherous mountains and sand dunes. No few times since entering this canyon, Starscream had managed to climb partway up a cliff face when the soft reddish stone crumbled beneath his claws, sending him tumbling down in a landslide of rocks and dried clay. After the most recent fall, Starscream had given up on climbing and resolved to walk the remainder of the journey.

The stern of the Harbinger was less than two kilometers away; all Starscream needed to do was move from this canyon into the next branch over, and the ancient wreckage would be within his grasp. This much, Starscream's navigation system had accurately predicted. What it did not predict was the arduous trial of walking on ground less dense than one's own exoplating, where each step threatened to sink into the Earth's mantle and drag the unsuspecting walker down into the depths of Unicron. Neither were the vertical distances an accurate depiction of travel times. Eight hundred meters of elevation between adjacent canyon branches would have been an easy hop for Starscream's jet altmode, but when confined to root-mode, it amounted to five frustrating falls and two days of trudging the long way around across unstable regolith.

What Starscream would not give to regain his transformation cog, and with it, his rightful mastery of the skies!

Useless wings, formerly a gleaming silver—and before that the proud white-and-red of Vosian regalia—now drooped miserably under a coating of the rust-brown clay that pervaded every gust of wind. Starscream's air intake filters were clogged with the same clay powder, and cooling systems emitted a strained whine as they attempted to regulate internal temperatures despite the blazing sun overhead. Underfoot, sand had worked its way into the mechanisms of the vector thrusters embedded in his heels, grinding out high-pitched squeaks with every step. It was tempting to fire up those thrusters and burn out the foreign material, but Starscream had made the mistake of melting sand once already. It had taken three hours to chip out the glass from the inner workings of his pedes. A nasty crunch, crunch sound still followed him while walking.

If not for the proximity of the Harbinger, Starscream might have turned back toward more hospitable climates long ago. The ship was just ahead, though. It promised to grant the safe haven that Starscream so desperately needed.

Starscream rounded a fork in the canyon, and the stern of the Harbinger appeared in all its splendor. Black radiation shields towered above earthen rubble. Sleek fins of space-grade alloy pierced through red rock, anchoring this immense feat of Decepticon engineering into the middle of a cliff face. Some two or three million years ago, not long after the Great Exodus, the magnificent Nemesis-class vessel had been shot down by Autobot pirates en route to a research outpost orbiting Regulon VII. It had split in half in the Earth's upper ionosphere. The bow had landed some three hundred kilometers eastward, while the stern was embedded in the canyon here. The wreckage had remained undisturbed since the crash, aside from a brief intrusion by Airachnid in recent days.

Twice during his sojourn on Earth, Starscream had entered the wreckage, but those had been only brief visits. Back then, distracted by enemy presence or limited time in a busy schedule, Starscream had not thoroughly inventoried the ship's supplies or salvaged all the useful components. Naturally, none of this information had made it into the mission report logs of the Nemesis.

Today, Starscream came to stay. He had all the time in the universe to explore the wreckage—provided, of course, that he did not run out of energon first. That was the first priority: finding energon. A ship as large as the Harbinger ought to have a considerable fuel reservoir to power its interstellar engines.

The Harbinger had torn neatly in half from enemy attacks and the subsequent crash. From the ground outside the wreckage, Starscream could see into several internal corridors and rooms. Near the top, a storage room was still packed with boxes of inert metal. Walkways and maintenance ducts honeycombed the middle decks, and the vertical shaft of a destroyed elevator lift had been bisected. Some of the corridors were distorted or closed off entirely with molten metal. While the reinforced outer hull of Nemesis-class vessels was designed to survive temperatures up to that within the corona of an O-type star, the interior architecture often used cheaper, less heat-tolerant alloys for ease of construction.

On the lowermost deck that was not buried, there was a large empty chamber that had to be either a hangar bay or a training room. Starscream chose this as the point of entry, clambering up a series of boulders until he reached the welcoming solidity of Cybertronian metal. Once aboard, Starscream kicked some loose dirt over the footprints from his passage, and then he stomped on the metal floor some more to dislodge sand from his joints. An alarming amount of sand, as well as a few glass shards, were piled on slightly scuffed floor plates when Starscream finished. He swept the debris out of the ship with great satisfaction.

Daylight did not penetrate far within the interior of the ship, and the internal lighting systems were reasonably offline after a few million years of disuse. Starscream switched his optical feeds to a deep-infrared spectrum, and the lower deck brightened into clarity. As he suspected, this was indeed a training room: a shooting simulator, to be specific. The rectangular blocks of holo-sim generators were unobtrusively placed in corners of the room to generate mobile holographic targets at any location and attack vector. Walls were splashed in countless scorch marks from missed energy blaster shots. One wall held a computer terminal meant to run the simulator program and tally scores. When Starscream poked at the buttons, the screen remained dark and responsive.

Opposite the missing section of the ship, the holo-sim room had a door with its sliding mechanism jammed open. Two aerial Vehicon frames laid beside the door, lifeless limbs frozen in a final, desperate struggle to avoid the gaping hole ripped into the ship. Their frames were partly melted to the floor and door, suggesting the cause of termination as the heat of atmospheric entry. Starscream stepped over the corpses with a disdainful sneer. They were weak, inferior aerial models, no doubt constructed late in the war. Starscream's superior Seeker architecture could easily handle reentry temperatures without taking critical damage.

In the corridor beyond the holo-sim room, a wave of familiarity struck Starscream. The Harbinger had the same internal layout as the Nemesis, though the purpose of specific rooms was clearly different. The holo-sim here was located in the same place as the mess hall on the Nemesis, meaning that there should be a priority access console in the office just two corridors away. On the Nemesis, that console would have been in Knock Out's office, which was also located across the hall from the medbay.

Information and repairs were just around the corner. After some internal debate, Starscream decided that information came first. There would be ample time to relax and perform maintenance on his systems later. First, he needed to review the ship schematics for the location of the energon reservoir. He manually dragged open two-fifths of the office sliding doors and entered.

The office had plain walls and a familiar layout: chair, side table, console keypad, and three holo-screens. This was both perfectly reasonable and inexplicably disappointing. Starscream had grown too used to the extravagant decor of Knock Out's identically arranged office. Somewhere along the line, Starscream had associated this particular furniture layout with an equally particular collection of posters and 3D figurines of the good doctor's favorite subject: himself. Instead, the office was bare and ascetic. The only trace of habitation was the offline Vehicon ground-frame slumped over the console. Half of the Vehicon's head and faceplates were caved in from the impact of a sudden crash, but the sturdy outer rim of the console keypad remained intact. Starscream shoved the obstruction out of the way and took his rightful place in front of the console.

The middle screen flickered to life, prompting for login credentials. In the corner of the login screen, the firmware version number indicated a shipwide operating system that had not been updated for the past two and a half million years. Starscream grimaced, scouring his memory banks for whatever the universal High Command override codes had been when the Harbinger was still operational. Thanks to the determined efforts of Autobot hackers, Soundwave had generated and subsequently discontinued over fifteen million different universal override codes in the past four million years since the Great Exodus. Starscream knew all the codes, but he had never bothered to memorize which code matched which firmware version. It had always been Soundwave's responsibility to keep the Nemesis up to date and distribute new codes as soon as they were generated. Unfortunately, this meant that Starscream did not have the faintest idea which universal override to use right now.

A sudden, all-consuming urge to punch through the screen arose. With considerable effort, Starscream resisted his baser impulses and started entering numbers. Claws tapped and scraped across ancient keys slightly harder than necessary, but Starscream managed to enter the first password.

"Access denied," flashed upon the screen. Starscream sighed and queued up the next password.

Here was the downside of using a priority access console, rather than the regular run-of-the-mill terminals: the direct connection to ship subsystems required higher security authorization to reduce the risk of incurring critical damage from unintelligent low-ranking grunts, Decepticon defectors, or Autobot saboteurs. It would indeed be much easier to find a standard access terminal and view the sanitized ship schematics, even though those were often riddled with blank spots in areas deemed off-limits for the common crew member. However, Starscream had never been one to settle for less when he could have more, and this principle applied to information as much as anything else.

Four Earth hours and countless failed login attempts later, the console pinged a cheerful, "access granted." All three screens lit up. Starscream committed the successful code to his memory banks and flexed tired claws in relief.

Navigating the ship data banks was a breeze after that. Starscream called up the ship schematics, enabled a text overlay marking the name and purpose of each room, and zoomed in on the quantum flux engines. The energon reservoir was typically placed in close proximity to the engines for maximum efficiency and responsiveness to variable fuel demand during hyperspace warp sequences.

Then, Starscream reset his optics in shock. He zoomed out, zoomed in again, and scrolled around on the ship schematic. The results were unchanged.

No energon reservoir.

A terrible suspicion crept over Starscream. The design of those engines looked a bit familiar. He opened the technical specifications of the propulsion system and skimmed through with sinking hopes.

The Harbinger was a Nemesis-class ship, but it had been commissioned in the Luna-II spaceport roughly a hundred and fifty thousand years after the Nemesis departed to hunt Autobots. Due to its later construction date, the Harbinger featured a few technological advancements. Most notably, the Harbinger operated using the latest and greatest energy conservation protocols, wherein the engine cells directly converted solar radiation into hyperwarp particles. This skipped two intermediate steps: firstly, using radiation to make energon incurred roughly 17% power loss to dissipated heat; secondly, using energon to generate hyperwarp particles introduced another 31% loss via generation of unusable chroniton emissions. By contrast, direct radiation-to-particle conversion had only a 22% net loss. The energy conservation protocols of the Harbinger were indeed more efficient than the antiquated energon-based engines of the Nemesis during interstellar travel, but that hardly mattered when the ship would never fly again.

Starscream needed to refuel with energon, not hyperwarp particles.

The lifeless frame of the previous office occupant gave Starscream a new idea. True, this ship had no energon reservoir, thus eliminating the most easily accessible source of refined fuel. However, a Cybertronian crew would have needed to refuel on energon. The mess hall and associated storage areas would have at least enough energon to sustain a crew complement of well over a hundred bots.

Filled with renewed hope, Starscream brought up the ship's schematics again and searched for the mess hall. It was where the shooting range had been on the Nemesis: two decks below the bridge, settled between the starboard viewports and the energon storage facilities.

More broadly speaking, the energon was in the bow of the Harbinger—currently three hundred kilometers away.

Starscream's enraged roar echoed through the empty halls. This time, he really did put his claws through the console, shattering the central screen and crushing a circuit node. Sparks showered from the new hole, and all three screens flickered into darkness. Starscream immediately regretted this impulsive action. He buried his head in both hands with a tired groan.

Three hundred kilometers amounted to a few minutes of flight time, but without access to his jet altmode, it was eight miserable hours of continuous walking.

Splendid.

At least the medbay was probably nearby. Starscream had been too focused on finding the energon reservoir to look closely at the schematics in this area of the ship, and the broken console removed that option entirely. Given Starscream's memory of the Nemesis, the medbay should be just across the hall. Knock Out always kept a few cubes of energon on hand for medical emergencies. With any luck, the medics on this ship would have done the same.

Starscream abandoned the broken console, giving its former owner a friendly kick on his way out of the office. The lifeless frame clanked like the heap of scrap metal that it was, releasing a cloud of dark particulates. Starscream grimaced at the sight of rust flakes on the floor. Hopefully, none of the rust had stuck to his foot. Starscream would have to decontaminate later. He carefully tiptoed the rest of the way out of the office, dragged the sliding doors shut behind himself, and used his claws to scrape a large X across the door. There was nothing useful left in that office.

The medbay was not a medbay after all, but something even better—a laboratory! Starscream spent a long, satisfying moment gaping at the rare sight of five undifferentiated protoforms suspended in stasis alcoves.

Protoforms. Starscream had not seen one of these for millions of years. The requisite proto-alloy metals were only found on Cybertron, and most of those mines had long since succumbed to wartime damage. Even the infernal Shockwave, for all his scientific experimentation, had not managed to build a viable artificial protoform without access to those essential proto-alloys. The last time Starscream had checked, Shockwave's progress on that project had halted entirely while the scientist devoted his efforts toward easier methods of producing soldiers.

Vehicons had come about as a byproduct of this drive: generic premade frames rendered the rare proto-alloys unnecessary, removing that limitation on how many soldiers could be built, while Shockwave's spark-fragmentation techniques enabled the production of over twenty new soldiers from a single stored spark. This process could rapidly churn out huge numbers of Vehicon troopers, but it sacrificed a great deal in quality and reliability. Vehicon sparks were also not as well-adapted to their frames as protoform-made warriors, making Vehicons more prone to termination after traumatic injury.

Unlike premade Vehicon frames, protoforms were a far more ancient and reliable method of creating new warriors. The protoform consisted of all the base circuitry, metallic alloys, and energon reserves needed to develop a functional frame that was perfectly suited to the spark and consciousness housed within. Once the spark was introduced, the soft matter of the protoform would rearrange at the molecular scale until reaching a form compatible with the spark's programming and energy field, at which point the mutable proto-alloys would harden into the exostructure of a fully fledged Cybertronian.

Over nine million years ago, Starscream himself had come online in this manner, spark infusing protoform with ideal aerodynamic proportions alongside hundreds of fellow newly created Seekers in the proud aerial city of Vos. Three million years ago, after sustaining critical battle damage in the Gorlam Prime system, Starscream had awoken with his spark and laser core transplanted to a new protoform, one of the few stored aboard the Nemesis at the time. One million years ago, the last protoform aboard the Nemesis had been used to revive Soundwave from the brink of termination after a particularly vicious Autobot attack.

Protoforms were treasures indeed, but what could Starscream do with them? True, there was enough energon inside each one to fill Starscream's fuel tanks, but destroying a technological masterpiece merely for its energon would be a foolish waste of resources. Earth held plenty of energon if one knew where to look. These five protoforms might very well be the only five in the whole solar system.

Hunger could wait. There were far better purposes for which protoforms could be used: namely, creating an army to serve Starscream.

Satisfied with this plan, Starscream inspected the lab. The five protoforms stood in front of him, suspended serenely within their stasis alcoves. Cables and data interconnects linked the protoforms to a central computer console. Starscream pressed a button on the keypad, and the console screen lit up with a familiar login screen. This time, Starscream entered the correct credentials on the first attempt. Data scrolled across the display, marking the status of the five protoforms. All five were functional and ready for ignition.

This posed a small problem: what good was a protoform without the spark to grant it life? Starscream was neither in need of a full-frame reformat, nor capable of performing such a delicate procedure on his own. Alternatively, Starscream could attempt to fracture his own spark and create clones, in the same manner as how dozens of Vehicons could be mass produced from only a single spark. This might actually be a good idea; with clones around, Starscream would have like-minded company at long last.

Clones, however, brought up another complication. Partly out of disdain for that hack Shockwave, and partly due to having more important responsibilities such as running the entire Decepticon faction in Megatron's absence, Starscream had never bothered to learn any fractured-spark cloning techniques. Vehicon production on the Nemesis had been Knock Out's job as onboard medic. All Starscream knew was that it required a precise application of high voltage to split off a self-sustaining fragment without irreparably damaging the main spark. If carried out improperly, the procedure could result in permanent damage or even death.

Out of the question. Starscream immediately discarded that idea.

Tampering with his own spark had the potential to go horribly wrong, with consequences ranging from permanent agonizing pain to temporary agonizing pain preceding termination. Even in the best case scenario, wherein Starscream successfully split a few viable fragments off his spark and used those to create an obedient set of clones, there could still be complications. Rumor had it that Vehicons originating from the same batch could sense each others' deaths. Starscream had no wish to find out if those rumors were true.

The right side of the laboratory held stacks of unknown machinery. The left side contained a storage cabinet lined with labeled drawers. Leaving the console, Starscream went left to investigate the contents of the cabinet. The drawers were arrayed five high and ten across, each tagged with an identity code between RDX-LP-200 and RDX-LP-249. Starscream randomly opened a drawer and yelped, stumbling back in surprise.

Disembodied laser cores. Three, to be precise. They were nestled in the drawer amid layers of spongy mesh padding. The associated data conduits and fuel vessels coiled neatly around each laser core, ends severed and sealed with surgical precision. Most alarming of all, two of the three laser cores were still active after two and a half million years in storage, pulsing with the pale glow of a dormant spark. The innermost crystal chamber of the third core had shattered into splinters, allowing the harmonic resonances contained within to leak out as the spark guttered.

Curious now, Starscream opened another drawer, another, and another. Four laser cores, two laser cores, three—perfect! There were enough sparks contained here for Starscream to raise a whole army without resorting to shady spark-fracturing methods.

First things first, though. Starscream only had five protoforms available. His army would have to begin with five warriors. Which five should he choose, though? Aerial soldiers would be ideal, of course, but an aerial spark looked the same as a grounder spark to the untrained optic.

Starscream returned to the console, calling up a search program. He input the prefix of the identity codes written on the boxes, RDX-LP-2**, and ran a broad database search. The scientists aboard the Harbinger must have kept a listing of their cargo somewhere.

"No results found," the computer returned.

Not to be deterred, Starscream simplified the query: RDX-LP.

"No results found."

Growing frustrated, Starscream input even broader search terms: RDX || LP || 2**. One database entry appeared under the "LP" project listing, and Starscream clicked on it.

Impossibly, the computer returned, "access denied."

The login credentials Starscream had used were universal High Command overrides. Theoretically, these credentials operated on a level of permissions above all other credential classes in a Decepticon database. Megatron himself used these same authorization codes when logging in to the Nemesis database; Starscream should know, as he had spent countless hours covertly keylogging Megatron's terminal access before coming to the conclusion that Megatron possessed the exact same authorizations as the rest of High Command. With these codes, the full contents of the Harbinger data drives should have been available for Starscream's viewing pleasure. Instead, this console denied Starscream access to the one file that he actively wanted.

"What's your malfunction?" Starscream grumbled as he keyed in a diagnostic query.

"Decepticon Scientist clearance level 8 required. Current authorization: level 7," the computer reported.

Scientist clearance—of course it was him. Only one Decepticon would dare to employ an encryption scheme that not even the other three-fourths of High Command could override. This organization system had Shockwave's handiwork all over it: plain symbols and numbers labeled the laser core cabinets, leaving not a single useful description anywhere. On a ship like the Harbinger, which had launched for a destination two sectors away while Shockwave remained on Cybertron and proceeded to get himself terminated by Autobots, this virtually guaranteed that no one would ever know what those numbers meant!

Come to think of it, that was probably the point of using such nondescript labels—to prevent someone like Starscream from getting any useful information while rooting through Shockwave's datafiles. Well, Starscream was proud to announce that Shockwave had failed completely at this, as expected. Starscream might not have been able to read that particular database entry, but his processor units and predictive algorithms worked just fine. Starscream could make an educated guess about mystery laser cores as well as anyone else. Better, in fact, thanks to his superior intelligence.

By Starscream's distinguished speculations, the laser core contents were intended to act as Vehicon root-sparks, each of which would undergo the fragmentation procedure that created batches of Vehicon troopers. If fragmentation was eschewed entirely, the intact sparks would be identical to those of any Cybertron-forged warrior. As to which five were suitable for the vanguard of Starscream's new army, luck and intuition had not led Starscream astray yet.

Starscream crossed the lab once again, glancing over the drawers and labels until his gaze landed on one that gave him a good feeling. It was labeled RDX-LP-217, and the number 217 stood out among the rest for some reason that presently evaded Starscream's memory banks. He could not recall why exactly this number seemed especially important, but it did.

Inside drawer 217, there just so happened to be a set of five intact laser cores. All of them pulsed with a healthy vitality. Five working laser cores matched perfectly five available protoforms. This pleasant coincidence was enough to confirm Starscream's choice.

Carefully plucking the first laser core from its mesh nest, Starscream installed it inside the torso cavity of the first protoform.

The laser core flared greedily, recognizing the presence of a viable medium nearby. Cables and tubes trailing from the laser core suddenly writhed with life, socketing into matching ports amid malleable proto-alloy circuit systems. Interlocking panels on the torso cavity spiraled shut around the new core. The entire protoform began to twist and fold into an exostructure that best suited the demands of the newly installed spark.

Satisfied with the progress of the first soldier, Starscream went back to fetch the others. He installed the second through fifth laser cores with similar ease. Each one took to its respective protoform eagerly. Soon, the laboratory filled with the sounds of metal plates rearranging as the underlying circuitry settled into place.

The laboratory console pinged softly. On-screen, five progress bars had appeared to monitor the status of the five protoforms' development. Starscream selected one progress bar, and it expanded with a detailed breakdown of events. Physical development was on-track across the board. Armor hardening rates even exceeded standard metrics, promising that these new soldiers would indeed be well-suited for battle. Most recently, kernel code from the laser core memory cells had begun integrating into the protoforms' new processor units.

This gave Starscream pause. Core memory was housed within the spark itself, embedded in the intricate resonance waveforms that together defined a Cybertronian life. Whereas a processor could be hacked and its data analyzed, there was no known method of identifying the information stored inside a laser core. Protoforms were manufactured with completely blank processors, but once the core memory upload began, personality and reaction matrices were developed.

What if the new soldiers had insubordinate personalities? If they decided to contest Starscream's leadership, violence could ensue. Starscream was only one Seeker, and a crippled one at that after the loss of his transformation cog. Despite his vastly superior wartime experience, one against five was not good odds. Instead, perhaps Starscream could manufacture a different form of leverage.

Starscream approached the most developed protoform, flexing his sharp claws in preparation for a quick extraction of the soldier's energy converter. Without this converter, one would not be able to use even the purest refined energon to power one's inner circuitry. This minor surgery would leave the new soldiers wholly dependent on Starscream's goodwill, thus compelling obedience from even the most stubborn individuals.

As Starscream lined up his claws, the console started beeping. An alert appeared on the screen. "Install loyalty program updates, version RDX-LP-303.217.6?"

Loyalty program? Excellent. That removed the obedience problem entirely, and it spared Starscream's claws from the messy job of digging around inside his new soldiers' innards. The program had probably been designed by Shockwave to keep his latest batch of experimental Vehicons in line. That poor excuse for a scientist never would have predicted that his inventions were now turned to Starscream's advantage.

Starscream could not click the "accept" button quickly enough. A sixth progress bar appeared onscreen to display the installation progress of the loyalty program.

The console pinged again. Another alert appeared. "Use local planetary altmodes?"

Beneath the alert, on a translucent screen overlaying the other progress bars, a completely random assortment of Earth-based ground and flight vehicles had appeared. Starscream frowned at the selection. None of the vehicles were aesthetically stylish, but then humans could hardly be considered to have any notion of Cybertronian style. Besides, unattractive Earth vehicle modes would be all the better for camouflaging Starscream's new army among the flesh creatures' primitive machinery. Even Soundwave, master of surveillance who heard and saw everything at all times, would never suspect a thing until it was too late.

Again, Starscream selected the "accept" option. The screen overlay showing Earth vehicles disappeared, and the sounds of whirring metal intensified.

As the six progress bars inched along, the protoforms gradually changed from formless lumps of proto-alloy into distinct Cybertronian shapes. Four were taller than Starscream, one shorter. All of them had dense, armored frames well suited for close-quarters combat. There were three ground-frames, identifiable by their bulkier proportions, and two aerial frames with more aerodynamic profiles.

The smaller aerial frame was slate-gray in color and had four long, thin projections sticking out of his back. A rotary-build? How interesting. Rotaries were rare among aerial frame types. In fact, aside from Airachnid, Starscream had not encountered a rotary in ages—not that he spent much time with the lower ranks, anyway. Rotary altmodes were slow and clunky, barely qualifying as flight capable, and they flew like mobile bricks when compared to the aerial grace of a Seeker frame. Fortunately, this rotary looked nothing like Airachnid; he was bulky and squarish where Airachnid favored a spindly needle-like exostructure, and his features were obscured with visor and battlemask.

With considerable alarm, Starscream noted that two of the ground-frame protoforms were becoming quite large. The green one stood half a head shorter than the blue one, whose height rivaled that of Optimus Prime. Dorsal weapons turrets stuck upward over both of their heads. The blue one looked slightly familiar, but Starscream could not place the memory. Anyway, all ground-frames pretty much looked the same: clunky, bulky, and brutishly strong. The visors and battlemasks on both large ground-frames only added to their similarity. As for the green one, tanks were the most common Decepticon frametype after Seekers, and who could be bothered to learn the names of cannon fodder? Not Starscream, who had far more important matters with which to occupy his processors and memory banks.

The largest of all the protoforms had become an aerial frame with a patriotic purple-brown-black color scheme. Like the previous three, this one had a visor and battlemask. Unlike the others, sleek wings and tail fins protruded from this one's back and legs. The wing geometry, coupled with the larger size and incredibly thick armor plating, indicated a space shuttle. Starscream approved. It would be useful indeed to have at least one soldier capable of reaching escape velocity.

The last protoform turned out to be the smallest of the five, a ground frame with a cheery yellow-and-purple color scheme that could have belonged on an Autobot just as well as a Decepticon. He was also the only one with a visible face. Huge purple optics flickered online in the final boot-up sequence, and he hopped out of the protoform alcove with a spring in his step. Dark faceplates were already lifting into the unforgettably honest smile of an entrepreneur to whom one might pay an extravagant sum for a doomsday device. Such a device might later malfunction when field tested against one's lord and master whose termination was long overdue, thus unfairly incurring said lord and master's extreme displeasure toward one's own self—

There was no might about it. That unwise purchasing decision had happened roughly five million years ago with this very same individual. Starscream stiffened as the yellow-and-purple ground-frame's identity clicked into place.

Swindle, the notorious arms dealer. On his own, Swindle was an acquisitions expert of rare skill. During the most destructive stages of the war on Cybertron, when Titans and combiners ran rampant and entire cities were decimated, Swindle had run as part of a Special Operations combiner team: the Combaticons.

These must be the five soldiers that Starscream had just created.

It had been over four million years since Starscream last encountered the Combaticons. Left on Cybertron after the Great Exodus, the Combaticons tried and failed to overthrow Shockwave. Starscream had lost track of them afterward; there were far more important matters to occupy his time, after all. Now, Starscream understood what had become of those infamous soldiers. Rather than rusting away in some prison on Cybertron, the Combaticons had been buried for millions of years in the wreckage of the Harbinger.

Starscream reconsidered his recent life choices. Specifically, that bit about not removing the energy converters. That would have been an excellent move, considering the temperaments of these particular soldiers—but it was too late for regrets. The Combaticons were already fully online and stepping out of their alcoves.

The shuttle, Blast Off, glanced around and made a curious noise. "This atmosphere is most… oxygenated. Are we not on Cybertron?"

"Esteemed Combaticons, welcome to the planet Earth. Our glory is near at hand. I have revived you from your long slumber in order to fulfill your ultimate destiny: destroying Megatron. The Combaticons have the honor of playing a critical role in this great endeavor—"

"Pardon the interruption, but who are you?" the blue ground-frame, Onslaught, cut in. He spoke with a surprisingly cultured accent for a grounder.

Offense prickled through Starscream, manifesting in the aggressive flare of his wings. Even four million years ago, Starscream had been the Decepticon Air Commander, the second-in-command of the entire faction, and the envy of all the troops. How dare these insignificant soldiers not recognize him?

Then again, the Combaticons' memory banks might have degraded after their long trial as frameless laser cores. Starscream could hardly fault mere soldiers for ignorance when it was a simple enough task to educate them.

"I'm glad you asked, Onslaught. I am Lord Starscream, rightful ruler of the Decepticons, and your leader."

The rotary, Vortex, experienced a sudden coughing fit. "Heard that one before."

Blast Off sighed and crossed his arms. "Good grief. You again."

Swindle, at least, was more appreciative. "You upgraded your frame? Must have cost a fortune."

Many glances were traded among the Combaticons, along with no few instances of rotor-wiggling on Vortex's part. Onslaught did not partake in this exchange. Instead, Onslaught raised a hand to his helm as though experiencing a processor ache.

Good, good. Starscream rather appreciated Onslaught's silence. At least one of the new soldiers showed appropriate respect for a superior. That "loyalty program" of Shockwave's must have been working in Onslaught's processors, even if it clearly had not taken for the others. To test the effectiveness of the loyalty program, Starscream gave them all a direct order.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Combaticons, kneel before your new master."

Nobody knelt. The tank, Brawl, took two thunderous steps forward and swung a fist at Starscream's head.

"You kneel," Brawl roared.

Starscream ducked under Brawl's punch just in time. The blow missed and kept going, slamming into the laboratory console instead. Smoke and sparks flew. When the air cleared, a blackened crater of destroyed circuitry remained where the console had once stood. Starscream glared at Brawl over the ruined workstation. Astonished features twisted into an incensed snarl.

"You ungrateful waste of metal! You dare raise a fist against me? I freed you from prison. I created your frame. Without my intervention, you'd still be stuck as a laser core, buried and forgotten on this miserable organic-infested mudball—"

"Brawl, restrain yourself," Onslaught cut in, a firm edge of authority sharpening his refined voice.

"Sir." Brawl retreated.

"Starscream, please elaborate. Which planet do we currently reside upon? Why did you rebuild our frames? What has transpired over the last..." Onslaught paused to check his chronometer, and his yellow visor brightened in surprise, "four million years?"

Though questioning one's superior was a sign of unacceptable impertinence, Starscream found great relief in Onslaught's civilized composure. Starscream straightened with all the dignity befitting the future leader of the Decepticons and revisited his historical archives.

"It's a long story. Soon after the Nemesis received word of your failed uprising, that idiot Shockwave threw you in prison. Meanwhile, Decepticon advance scouts tracked down the Autobot flagship in orbit around Velocitron..."